Horse is a cult of personality. [Assess the horse's attitude.] Lots of pre-teen girls want to be with horse so bad that they read stories about girl and horse. They want to know what it is to touch horse. [Get the horse to a quiet familiar area, if possible.] They want thick copper skin rippled in muscle and motion. They want hands to wrap gauze bandages over the sore legs of overworked horse. [An injured horse who is no doubt also excited and scared.] When girl sponges horse, when girl rubs alcohol over small cut of horse, it is not sexual healing, ok?
Girl and horse are, on some level, the same. [Reassure the horse by rubbing the neck and talking to it.] Probably on a spiritual level, I guess, which is why girl can understand the difference between an impassioned whinny and an agonized whinny. [Pinch a fold of skin on the neck and release it.] A vet's book is of no use because it takes girl to truly hear horse. [Move quietly and slow.] Like, I mean, it took Anna Sewell to write Black Beauty in first person horse perspective. Girl heard horse.
Horse body is a social body; horse needs expertise. [You need items in your kit to provide emergency care: salts and creams] Girl who spends day thinking about horse trains hands to hear horse. [To flush out any full thickness wounds.] Notice that no one ever wrote the first person perspective of a wild horse that stays wild. [You cannot pull the edges of the wound apart because the skin is still connected at the base of the wound.] When a wild horse breaks a leg, no one is in the field to shoot it. I mean, because it is wild. [An injured horse who is no doubt also excited and scared.]
Jane Cope grew up in Michigan but now lives in Paris, France.